Adrien Pajot
- @Adrien_Pajot
- | He/His
WILDLABS
Fauna & Flora
How do I apply?
Follow these steps:
- Review the WILDLABS Awards 2025: Terms and Conditions
- Complete the WILDLABS Awards Application Form.
The submission deadline is Thursday, 13 February, 2025 at 11:55 PM GMT.
What projects will be supported?
We are committed to supporting projects at different stages of development. This includes:
- Fostering Innovation (primarily for technology projects): We aim to support innovation grounded in answering real conservation needs. We expect these projects to be testing and piloting technology solutions, with conservation end-user needs already identified.
- Technology Adoption and Application (primarily for conservation projects): We aim to support conservation programmes to integrate technology to broaden the reach and impact of their conservation initiatives. We expect these projects to be led by conservation practitioners and researchers and may also involve collaborations with tech providers to improve/adapt existing tools to conservation situations. We hope the findings will support technology adoption for other conservation projects.
- Usability & Scaling (primarily for technology projects): We aim to make technology more accessible and widely available. This means improving usability and bridging the gap between R&D and technologies being available at scale for conservationists to use in their work. We will also support work to transform project ideas into products, helping to scale manufacturing and deploy technologies that have already been piloted.
Across all project types and award categories, cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration are highly encouraged.
Read more about last year's 13 awardees here.
What do we encourage?
We believe in supporting technology-enabled projects addressing diverse challenges across species, ecosystems, and geographies. Here are examples of the types of conservation challenges projects could be working on:
- Biodiversity and/or environmental monitoring
- Captive breeding
- Citizen science
- Climate change/resilience
- Habitat loss or destruction - (e.g deforestation)
- Endangered species & ecosystems
- Illegal or unsustainable fishing (iuu)
- Human-wildlife conflict and coexistence
- Invasive species
- Pollution
- Protected area management and planning
- Scientific research
- Species protection
- Wildlife crime, illegal wildlife trade, or poaching
- And much more!
We also believe that our capacity to advance conservation hinges on leveraging and advancing a wide array of technologies, such as:
- AI / machine learning
- Bioacoustics
- Biologgers / animal tracking
- Camera traps
- Data management and processing platforms (e.g., Movebank, Wildlife Insights, Zooniverse)
- GIS and remote sensing (satellite, multispectral, and thermal imagery, LiDAR)
- eDNA & genomics
- Mobile apps & citizen science platforms
- Non-AI computational tools (e.g., R, Python, statistical software)
- Networked sensors
- Protected area management tools (e.g., SMART, EarthRanger)
- Remote sensing & GIS
- UAVs / drones
- And much more!
On the application form, we will inquire about the technologies, both software and hardware, that you are currently using or intending to use/develop in your project. This information will enable Arm and its partners to assess how they can provide support to your project within and potentially beyond the grant period.
We are also interested in supporting applicants with projects that are in progress or active development who could benefit from funding and support to move their projects forward.
Applicants of all skill levels, stages of development, and professional or academic affiliations (including independent conservation tech developers) are welcome to apply.
Individuals from underrepresented groups are highly encouraged to apply. Increasing accessibility to innovative tools and fostering strong collaborative networks are key aspects of these awards.
Requirements
- When planning your budget, please ensure to allocate funds for the production of a video highlighting your project's process and impact.
- Award funds will not support budget allocation towards fees for higher education.
- As these are one-year projects, we will not cover publication fees due to insufficient time to move through the peer-reviewed publication process.
What are the selection criteria?
You can apply for one grant level only. However, the selection committee reserves the right to allocate more or less funding than the selected level.
If a project has applied for more than one grant level, all related applications will be rejected.
Each project will be assessed across five core criteria:
- Application Quality
- Perceived Feasibility
- Team Capacity
- Contribution to the Conservation Technology Sector
- WILDLABS Integration
For the five $50,000 grants:
- Projects must be proposed by teams composed of at least two people (ideally including cross-sector and/or interdisciplinary collaboration).
- Payment will be made ONLY to the bank account of an organization.
- We expect applications to showcase the regular or high-quality involvement of at least one person in the WILDLABS community.
Make sure to read the 2025 WILDLABS AWARDS Terms and Conditions before applying.
Selection Process
Following the submission deadline on Thursday, 13 February, 2024 at 11:55 PM GMT:
- Submitted proposals will be assessed by the WILDLABS Team in February 2025
- A shortlist will be reviewed by Arm’s engineering team in March 2025
- A final list will be reviewed by an independent judging committee in March 2025
- Awardees will be contacted and announced in April 2025
Key Dates
- Launch: 21 November 2024
- Informative webinar: 19 December 2024
- Applications Close: 13 February 2025
- Judging: February - March 2025
- Award: April 2025
- Activities: May 2025 to April 2026 (with some flexibility)
For more information
- Join our informative webinar on 19 December. Register here. This event will be recorded.
- Or if you can't wait until then, watch last year’s webinar here.
- Discover some lessons learned from last the WILDLABS Awards 2024.
- Join our open discussion to ask your questions.
- Contact awards@wildlabs.net
Related content
Article
WILDLABS Awards 2025: 5 key lessons learnt from applications last year
Adrien Pajot and 1 more
Our Award Project Manager, Adrien Pajot, read all 194 applications received in the 2024 WILDLABS Awards. As we open up the application process for 2025, he offers his advice for the five things you should keep in mind...
22 November 2024
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